At party, Cuomo’s spirit and labor love on display

You fill in the blanks for the metaphor. Silver has been facing a storm of questions about Assemblyman Vito Lopez, a Brooklyn power broker who was accused of sexual harassment and sanctioned by Silver on Aug. 24. Yesterday, before the party, Silver told journalists he had asked Lopez to resign.

But at the party, nobody cared. Delegates enjoyed an open bar and gnoshed on a spread of pizza, wings, chicken fingers and mini-burgers. (I saw some unpicked fruit plates in the corner.) Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings held court at the bar beside his wife. Reps. Jerry Nadler, Paul Tonko and Eliot Engel caught up with old friends. Assemblywoman Deborah Glick bowled for the first time in 40 years, she said.

“What can I say,” Silver told me after rolling a strike in his only shot. “If I’d had bowling shoes, I would have bowled two strikes.”

Even as Lopez’s troubles have dominated chatter at the convention, my big takeaway from the party was Cuomo’s presence here. Yes, as we’ve all noted, the governor himself won’t be here until Thursday. But working the room in his stead was LG Bob Duffy and Joe Percoco, Cuomo’s special assistant. There were at least half a dozen other second-floor staffers in the room, and Cuomo’s press secretary Josh Vlasto arrived Tuesday morning.

Duffy praised Cuomo as “the greatest governor in the nation” and, like the signage imported by the Democratic State Committee, proclaimed the Empire State as the “progressive capital of our country.”

“Under Governor Cuomo, in the last two years it’s really started to turn around,” he said.

The other point of the event was to salute New York’s major labor unions, on Labor Day. As Elizabeth has noted, Cuomo sent a gushing e-mail to supporters about the societal contributions from organized labor, but gave out “We Love New York” hats that were manufactured in Cambodia.